Simple Considerations on the Subject of Liberty

I hold this truth to be self-evident: that all people are not created equal and will not be treated as though this is the case. This is not my personal preference, but it is a realistic assessment of the facts of life.
People are not "created equal": they are limited by hereditary, cultural, geographic and socio-economic circumstances to a narrow range of possible outcomes and potentialities. It is a mix of influences which are (a) "naturally-endowed" (the amalgamation of circumstances existent at the time of birth--genetics, etc.), (b) uncontrollably or indeliberately externally imposed (e.g. disease and accidental traumas, as well as less dramatic and even minute subjective influences like incidental exposure to ideas and vocabulary) and (c) deliberately externally imposed (education, theology, propaganda, advertising, mass media). If we could do away with the overly-simplistic ideology that people are really "equal," in any sense of the term, we can perhaps also stop using and thinking along the lines of such misconceived notions as "the people," "the general will," "the national interest" and so on. Rarely are groupings as simple as our common abstractions would have us believe, and it is highly unlikely, especially given the large populations concerned, that any useful generalizations can be applied to a "demographic" or single easily-isolated section of the population.
The similarity between the classical Marxist infatuation with achieving absolute equality through absolute control of governmental authority and our present emphasis on universal suffrage and non-discriminatory governmental policies is palpable. In a system where politics is reduced to the appeal to certain demographics in an analogous manner to effective marketing strategy or "market share," it should not be surprising that totalizing labels are used to reduce a large mass of individuals into definable categories. The tragedy is the acceptance (both tacit and explicit) by social justice advocates of such totalizing categorical labels with the expectation of finding some meaningful manner of shrinking power differentials between individuals and repressive institutions.
An easy illustration of the paradox inherent to attempting to achieve individual freedom through uniformity/conformity is the institution/ideology of feminism. By defining as its primary power base a group which composes more than 50% of the world's population, feminism utilizes a tried and true tactic (power by numbers) to solidify its claim as a formidable force in the fields of political advocacy and philosophy (more specifically, ethics). This is not in itself wrong, to attempt to elicit positive egalitarian changes by force of sheer popular will, but the ultimate effect, as with any group or institution which claims to be single-minded, is to reduce the initiative and freedom of the members in favor of an all-too-familiar conflict-oriented approach to activism. The risk factors for increasingly authoritarian behavior are abundantly obvious in this case: (1) the denunciation of the "other" (in this case males and non-feminist females) implied by the exclusivity of the ideal, (2) inflexibility and hostility caused by negativistic associations with all things male, (3) the underlying presumed necessity for authoritative sources to "speak for" women who are "incapable" of advocating for themselves and who may in fact not wish to be advocated for, (4) confusion/dissention among self-proclaimed adherents due to inevitable disagreements over the specific tenets of the larger and broadly-outlined concept of "feminism." These factors are present in any unifying organization or affiliation. Of these, the fourth is the most curious, for in an (unfortunately) Hegelian manner, groups tend to subdivide on a long enough timescale, creating novel justifications for exclusion or exception and feeding the first two. What I am definitely not suggesting is some uncontrollable progression toward an ultimate ideal, but rather a recurring cycle that unthinkingly feeds (or at least fails to reverse) the trend toward more sophisticated and complex systems of tacitly accepted authority.
I do not wish to imply that feminists are closet dictators, or anything of the sort. Instead I mean to encourage all activists and those in the social justice fields to consider that exclusive advocacy of rights is tantamount to denial of rights to others. The answer to ubiquitous inequality is not the selective improvement of certain groups' situations, but the gradual elimination of barriers to any individual maximally improving their quality of life.